


all my time is yours as much as mine

by halfabreath



Series: August Prompt Free For All [3]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-26
Updated: 2017-09-26
Packaged: 2019-01-05 18:41:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,625
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12195504
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfabreath/pseuds/halfabreath
Summary: No one knows how long Holster's been alive. No one knows how much time Ransom has left.Everyone knows about things. Not everyone has one, but everyone that does has a different word for it. Gifts. Abilities. Talents. Purpose. Superpowers. Quirks. Most things are small, but sometimes, in very rare circumstances, they’re all encompassing and terrifying.There’s a reason Ransom and Holster call them curses.





	all my time is yours as much as mine

**Author's Note:**

> fic number 7 out of 21 for my August Prompt Free For All, specifically for the prompt "Holsom + magic." technically takes place in the same verse as Pain Perdu. title from "Vapour Trail" by Ride.
> 
> http://halfabreath.tumblr.com

Everyone knows about _things._ Not everyone has one, but everyone that does has a different word for it. _Gifts. Abilities. Talents. Purpose. Superpowers. Quirks._ Sometimes they’re useful but often times they aren’t. They range from perfect pitch to control over the weather to the ability to always grow perfectly ripe tomatoes.

Most _things_ are small, but sometimes, in very rare circumstances, they’re all encompassing and terrifying. There’s a reason Ransom and Holster call them curses.

* * *

No one knows quite how long Holster’s been alive. He was born in 1991 but he’s been living far longer than the time that’s passed between then and now, simply because time doesn’t always work for Holster. That’s how he’d described it to Ransom their freshman year.

“It’s like, I dunno.” He’d slurred, sprawled over Ransom’s lap with a beer in one hand and the material of Ransom’s sweatshirt crumpled in the other. “It slows down for me. Once, in high school, I was in a study hall that lasted like two and a half days.”

“How’d you know?” Ransom asked, combing his fingers through Holster’s hair. He always liked to brush his fingers through the soft strands when he was drunk.

Holster shrugged, shoulder digging into Ransom’s stomach. “Fell asleep twice and I smelled like, super bad at the end of it. ‘Sides, I can tell. I know how time is supposed to feel.” Ransom just nods and plucks the beer from between Holster’s loose fingers, taking a long drink before handing it back.

“Can you do it now?” Ransom asks, and Holster nods before curling a little closer to him, eyes squeezed shut. The music they’re listening to drops octaves as the sound waves are forced to stretch and the people around them begin moving in slow motion. Ransom looks around the party, amazed, and holds Holster tight.

“Time doesn’t work for me, either.” He’d whispered into his friend’s hair. He didn’t admit it to many people; the topic was so mangled by anxiety and fear it was difficult to articulate. Ransom was only able to say it then because the alcohol made him bold and Holster’s warm weight made him strong. Holster opened his eyes and looked up at Ransom in confusion, then turned when the music warbled from the low, distended tones to a sped up, high pitched melody. The partygoers moved so fast they blurred, and in seconds the Haus emptied as Ransom sped through the end of the party. When they found an equilibrium the music had stopped and the Haus was dark, party detritus scattered over the floor.

Holster tipped the last of the beer down his throat and set the can to the side before wrestling Ransom down until they were both laying together, limbs tangled and breathing synced. “Fuck curses,” He said, and ducked his head to slot their lips together. They made out, off and on, until they fell asleep, and when they woke up the next morning it was with hangovers and their arms still wrapped around each other.

They didn’t talk about the kiss, but they did talk about everything else: gifts and curses and how fucking annoying clocks are and then - then they made The Plan. Ransom would speed things up whenever Holster slowed them down, and they’d make it out of college in exactly four years - no more, no less.

No one knows how much time Ransom has left.

Time applied to Ransom until he was seventeen years old. At 9:37:14 on October 15, 2011, when Ransom - then Justin - was taking his first standardized exam for entry into american colleges. he was given sixty minutes to complete the math portion of the exam; he swears it passed in forty five seconds. By the time he’d finished the first problem the time had been up, and when he’d told his parents about it they’d assumed he’d panicked.

Ransom had not panicked. He spent forty five seconds on one problem and had been forced to hand in the test with only one answer bubble filled. After that test, though - that’s when Ransom began to panic. No matter how long he studied or how well he knew the material, time sped up whenever he sat down with the test in front of him. He knows it’s not just anxiety. Time changes, not Ransom’s perception of it.

It’s only after the same thing begins to happen on a nearly weekly basis, whenever he has an assignment due for school, that his parents take him to see a specialist. Three weeks later, after a series of grueling tests, he has an answer: he definitely has test anxiety, and he definitely has a _thing_.

“Think of it like another challenge,” His father said. “Another obstacle you’ll overcome.” Justin wanted to believe him, but it was difficult taking advice from someone who’s _thing_ was controlling the growth of mint in his herb garden. His mother, with her eidetic memory, wasn’t much help, either.

Holster’s the only one who knows exactly when gifts become curses. There are gray hairs in his playoff beard and sometimes, at night, he’ll whisper his fears into the dark ( _what if I’ve lived too long already and drop dead of old age tomorrow, did I spend too much time on the bad things and go too fast during the good times, why can’t I control it,  do you ever wonder what it’s like to not be like this)_ and Ransom will reach down and offer his hand. Holster always takes it, and Ransom always lets him slow down time for as long as he needs to be comforted. They’ve weathered long nights together, seconds stretched into minutes into hours, hands joined halfway between their bunks.

* * *

Once, in juniors, Holster has played in a game that lasted a week. Others had been longer. He tells people he lived in Iowa for two years, but when he thinks back to the nights that stretched on and on, the road trips that took months, the practices and drills and the dragging realization that he wouldn’t be drafted –

Holster knows he spent much longer than two years in Iowa.

During that same time, Ransom’s junior and senior years of high school blurred together. He’d tried to calculate all the lost seconds once, adding up memory after memory, but he’d given up halfway through. It had been devastating to watch the minutes slip into days and weeks of time he’d never get back. How much development had he lost? What knowledge had he missed? Would his time at Samwell feel the same way years after he graduates?

Ransom can’t stand the thought of losing a single second at Samwell.

* * *

They throw a kegster without Ransom once, and only once. Ransom’s in Boston at a conference and Holster doesn’t know how to balance time without him. He hadn’t been particularly good at it before, but now, without Ransom constantly speeding things back up, things get out of control.

The kegster lasts fifteen hours and Holster’s not the only one affected. Everyone in his immediate area - and there are _a lot_ of people in his immediate area that night - slows down. The doors open at 10pm and they drink and dance for hours and when someone checks the time after the sixth game of pong they realize it’s only 11:30. They finish Ransom’s carefully curated party playlist - all 215 songs of it - and have to start it again. They actually run out of tub juice, too, and the alcohol doesn’t metabolize as fast as it should so everyone who attends is hungover for days after. When Ransom returns on Sunday night they still haven’t cleaned the Haus and Holster’s been asleep for almost two full days, exhausted from the effort.

They don’t have a party without Ransom again.

* * *

Senior year, Ransom doesn’t hold up his end of the bargain. It starts small: brunches that take up half the day, late nights on the couch, sunsets in the reading room stretching on and on, the sky still bathed in brilliant color long after the sun should have set.

They’d promised they’d be in and out of college in exactly four years, but now that the time’s almost up Ransom can’t stomach leaving. Holster will slow things down without even noticing, powerful as he is, but Ransom’s always painfully aware of when his _thing_ kicks in and eventually he just…stops.

He feels bad - Bitty’s having a hard semester and Whiskey is spending more time with the lacrosse team than with them - but every time he looks at the clock and sees that they’re another minute closer to graduating he panics. By the time November rolls around he’s only actively speeding up their games. Holster doesn’t seem to notice.

He doesn’t bat an eye when they somehow have the time to watch _Miracle on Ice_ _, Goon,_ and _Breakfast at Scott’s_ on a weeknight. He’s nonplussed when a post-kegster clean up and deets swap takes three hours instead of one. He accepts longer intermissions between periods easily. He doesn’t question why the bus ride back from Boston College that takes much longer than usual, and he doesn’t say anything when Ransom curls up in the seat next to him and rests his head on his shoulder. He’s silent when Ransom crawls into his bed instead of dropping a hand off the side of his bunk until he whispers _what if it’s not a curse after all_ into their shared pillow.

Holster doesn’t say a word when Ransom tilts forward and kisses him but he does cup his face with trembling hands to pull him close, kissing him again and again until their lips are sensitive and swollen. It’s an endless night, but not a cursed one.


End file.
